PLEASE NOTE: The Reality TV World Message Boards are filled with desperate
attention-seekers pretending to be one big happy PG/PG13-rated family. Don't
be fooled. Trying to get everyone to agree with you is like herding cats,
but intolerance for other viewpoints is NOT welcome and respect for other
posters IS required at all times. Jump in and play, and you'll soon find out
how easy it is to fit in, but save your drama for your mama. All members are
encouraged to read the
complete guidelines.
As entertainment critic Roger
Ebert once said, "If you disagree with something I write, tell me so, argue
with me, correct me--but don't tell me to shut up. That's not the American way."

To be completely honest, this still revolves entirely around Notre Dame and Texas.

Everyone knows that the Big Ten added just one school because it wants to add Notre Dame and figures that the best way to do that is leave slots open so that the Irish can have some input on the conference after they join. Big East members know that too, and they know that Notre Dame's half-commitment to their conference is unsustainable.

In fact, it's just the same as Texas' half-commitment to the Big 12.

When the Big Ten added Nebraska, two Big East schools were discussed as potential Big Ten members then: Rutgers and Connecticut. Both of these schools will end up either in the ACC or the Big Ten. But we won't know which until we see if Notre Dame and Texas are ready to actually join conferences.

Frankly, it seems pretty clear that Texas is not, which is why the Pac-12 just passed on them. But we don't know about Notre Dame.

The other school in a good position is Missouri, despite the fact that the Tigers have traditionally been almost as bad as Rutgers. Missouri has wanted to be in the Big Ten desperately, and it's a logical fit. But now the SEC is looking at Missouri too.

It all comes down to cable-TV markets. (That's West Virginia's problem; its closest major market is Pittsburgh, but Pitt and Penn State ace it out there..) However, the steps Missouri has taken to upgrade itself as an academic institution don't hurt any.

I have to disagree. There are only two universities in the US with conference membership and their own football packages: Notre Dame, which has a special deal with the Big East, and Texas, which has a special deal with the Big 12. No other major conference except for those two cripples would permit these sweetheart deals to continue, because all other major conferences (Big 10, SEC, ACC, Pac-12) require 100% revenue sharing.

At the same time, the Big Ten is actually an academic union named the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, which consists of the 12 Big Ten schools plus the University of Chicago. In fact, one of the conditions for Nebraska's admission to the Big Ten was that it needed to upgrade its academic program to CIC standards. But the Big Ten also wants to maintain its fan base, which includes am average of 1.5 million followers per school. Nebraska made it in because its fan base was significantly larger than the current average, despite its academic deficiencies.

The Big Ten/CIC has agita over the fact that the ACC and the Pac-12 are seen as at least its academic equals, and perhaps betters.

Notre Dame is a top-25 academic program and has a fan base of over 2.3 million. By contrast, Missouri (which has already engaged in many of the academic reforms that Nebraska still has to make) has a fan base of only 1.1 million, and all other potential Big Ten members (Kansas, Rutgers, UConn) are under 1 million.

As a result, Notre Dame will never be off the table for the Big Ten. And Notre Dame knows that its most lucrative pairing, if it has to join a revenue-sharing conference, is with the Big Ten, so the Big Ten will never be off the table for ND.

Yes, I remember all that when they added Nebraska but it was also reported around here that the Big Ten gave ND this is our last offer to join. ND may think that the Big Ten will always be there but it has seemed that the current Presidents of the Big Ten have had enough of trying to kiss their butt. That may change yes but right now even if ND came to the Big Ten there is a big group that will turn them down so their inclusion might not be as automatic as they think.

I'm hoping that with all this will some how doom the BSC and we get a true playoff system to find the real national champion.

GO WINGS! 2008 Stanley Cup Champs!sig Snidget and by IceCat, and bobble head by Tribephyl

right now even if ND came to the Big Ten there is a big group that will turn them down

I'm sorry, but that's nonsense. The discussion about 2010 being Notre Dame's last chance to join the Big Ten was tied to the possible expansion of the Big Ten to 16. It didn't happen. And do you know why not? Because Notre Dame said no.

Plus, the governor of Connecticut has said that the ACC would love to add ND. According to him, that's why the ACC stopped at 14.

I have a strong feeling that Selig is about to be severely rebuked by the bankruptcy court in the L.A. Dodgers case. Even though Frank McCourt is a disgusting sleazebag, I admit to rooting for him against Selig.

It was crazy for the Big East to add TCU in the first place. The news that TCU is defecting to the Big 12 in 2013 shouldn't surprise anyone. Better to be one of 9 in the Big 12 (especially playing Texas, Texas Tech and Baylor, who were all in the old SWC with TCU) than one of 7 in the Big East. $5 million is a small exit price to pay.

But the exit of TCU in 2013, coupled with the exist of Syracuse and Pittsburgh in 2013, just leaves 6 football schools in the Big East:

From the original league: Rutgers, West Virginia.Temple's replacement: Connecticut (upgraded from I-AA).Miami, BC and VT's replacements: Cincinnati, Louisville, South Florida (from C-USA).

How does the Big East survive? Rutgers is almost certain to leave. Once Rutgers goes, who will want to televise the football conference? Does the nonfootball basketball league survive while the football conference explodes?

It was very smart of the Big 12 to offer TCU a spot at their table. It's a move I wish the SEC had made. I'm okay with them offering Missouri (okay, I'm predicting the future here), but I think TCU would be a "sexier" and more fun choice. Granted, that's assuming they can continue their recent success. Though not a powerhouse, Missouri has been steady as a decent to good program for a lot longer.

One question I've not heard anybody address is how does all or any of this affect the BCS. Once the Big Least is reduced to a shell of its former self, are they replaced in the formula for who gets the big-money bowls by another conference or do we just get one more at-large team. If it's the former, then who, the WAC? Conf-USA? If it's the latter, then would the BCS have to take up Mike Slive's proposal of allowing more than two teams from any one conference into the BCS bowls?

Perhaps more importantly, does any of this expansion business help advance the righteous cause of annointing a true national champion via 3-week playoff system?

Oh, and why would Rutgers be the linchpin for the Big East to hold on to a television contract?

As long as Texas and Oklahoma stay put, it looks like the Big 12 will survive, although it might drop to a 10-team league. (But it can't become the Big 10 -- that name is taken.) The Big East, though, seems destined to become the new Conference-USA, with a similar level of prestige.

Looks like WVU is heading for the Big 12. That knocks the five original Big East members down to two (Rutgers, Connecticut), with three newbies (Louisville, Cincinnati and South Florida) still hanging on and Pittsburgh and Syracuse (ACC) and WVU on the first bus out.

I have to admit that I don't think of the Greater Pittsburgh region as Big 12 country, but I don't blame WVU for jumping -- neither the ACC nor the Big 10 were interested in being in Morgantown.

And my uncle played football at WVU back in the pre-pre-Big East days, so I'd like to see the school maintain some prestige.

Bumping this because the seven religion-founded basketball schools in the conference have collectively decided they can't take all this heresy of changing faiths -- and really, whoever heard of taking money from someone's beliefs? -- and split off, taking their automatic tournament bid with them.

So at this point, if you know what's going on with the conference, you're the only one.

First off, "conferences" were created when the Universities of Chicago, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin and Northwestern and Purdue University banded together in 1896 to form the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives. Showing how informal conference affiliations are, the group continued on under that name until 1987, when the group officially changed its name to the Big Ten Conference.

What changed? A 1984 Supreme Court case, that's what. Until 1984, the NCAA negotiated a central TV contract for ALL Division I-A football schools. No team was permitted to appear in a nationally televised game more than three times in a year. As a result, a number of powerhouse football schools, believing that the NCAA did not actually have this power, started a group called the College Football Association, and they negotiated a separate contract with NBC in 1981. In response, the NCAA said that it would place all of the sports programs, not just football, at the participating institutions on probation and ban them from any TV appearances. Naturally, the program leading the CFA action, Oklahoma, sued the NCAA before it could do that. In the case of NCAA v. Univ. of Oklahoma, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the NCAA had no such power and that its actions were an unconstitutional restraint of trade.

The CFA contract bound all of the teams for only five years. After that, each conference was free to make its own TV deals. And suddenly the conferences, which had played little role in the world of NCAA Division I-A football, became dominant.

Prior to that, conferences had only mattered because the champions received an automatic bid to the NCAA basketball tournament. That was the reason that certain Eastern schools had banded together to form a basketball-only conference called the Big East in 1979. When the CFA deal ended and TV contracts became a conference responsibility, the Big East suddenly became a football conference as well. And that's what prompted the first realignments, with every conference trying to improve its TV package.

So the ACC added Florida State and the Big Ten added Penn State, while the Pac-8 added the state of Arizona with both Arizona and Arizona State and became the Pac-10. The Big East added Virginia Tech and Miami, plus Temple for football, to get to the NCAA minimum of 8 teams to offer a sport; later, Connecticut decided to upgrade its football program and the Big East then dropped Temple. But the big shift came about in Texas, where the Southwestern Conference had been a 9-team conference composed of 8 Texas schools (Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Baylor, TCU, SMU, Rice and Houston) and Arkansas. Obviously its TV package had little appeal outside of Texas. And the Big 8 included Oklahoma, Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado and 4 small market weak sisters (Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State and Oklahoma State). Oklahoma and Texas pushed for a merger to increase the TV package, and ultimately the first four Texas schools joined the Big 8 to create the Big 12, while Arkansas joined the Southeastern Conference and the other four Texas schools got screwed.

Then, the NCAA permitted schools to add an extra game, expanding the regular NCAA season from 11 to 12 games. And then the NCAA permitted a 13th game for a "conference championship" if a conference had at least 12 members.The conference championships are what triggered the next round of conference jumps, because the conferences were aligned as follows:

Clearly four of the conferences needed to add teams to get to the magic 12. More importantly, the Big Ten and Pac-10 had the most lucrative TV contracts of all, so they weren't under as much pressure, but the Big East and ACC were desperate. The fireworks started when the ACC decided to add 3 teams from the Big East: Miami, Boston College, and Syracuse, to get up to the magic number of 12. The state of Virginia threw such a fit that Virginia Tech was added to the ACC in place of Syracuse. That brought the ACC up to 12, but the Big East was crippled at 5. It then added the two most prominent programs in the country not already in a major conference: Louisville and Cincinnati, as well as a minor program in the right location: South Florida, and it got back up to 8. But everyone knew that the Big East couldn't survive with 8 and the Big Ten and Pac-10 weren't going to stay at 11 and 10.

Nevertheless a lull followed, until the Big Ten did something that caught everyone by surprise: it launched a successful cable network of its own in partnership with Fox. As a result, the Big Ten schools became the richest by far. Meanwhile, the SEC's championship game turned its schools into national powerhouses, which meant that the Big Ten would still want to add another team despite its wealth, because the Big Ten didn't like being the "little sister" to the SEC.

This played out when the University of Texas decided to start its own football network, the Longhorn Network, without any of its Big 12 partners, thus ending any chance of the Big 12 starting its own network, At the same time, the Pac-10 and SEC started their own networks. This made the Big 12 very unappealing, and Big 12 schools scrambled to leave. Texas and Oklahoma tried to make a deal with the Pac-10, but the first to succeed was Nebraska, which was immediately offered admission in the Big Ten. That solved the Big Ten's problem, but it led Colorado to jump to the Pac-12 and Texas A&M to jump to the Southeastern Conference.

Now the number of schools in each conference were:Big East - 8ACC - 12Big Ten -12SEC - 13Big 12 - 9Pac-10 - 11

Problem was that the 13-team conferences couldn't stay there, because one team would have to play a nonconference game every week. So the SEC recruited Missouri from the Big 12. Meanwhile, the Pac-10 added Utah, which had become the first non-major conference school to make it to a major bowl game, and became the Pac-12. So that left:

Big East - 8ACC - 12Big Ten - 12SEC - 14Big 12 - 8Pac-12 - 12

Now the schools in the Big East realized that they didn't have any good way to get to 12 teams and increase their TV revenue. That meant that the schools would need a new confernce, and some of them had the advantage of being able to bring new TV markets to their new conference. Thus, Pittsburgh and Syracuse hopped to the ACC, while Wast Virginia bolted for the Big 12, which needed immediate help before it disintegrated. The Big East recruited TCU, which had been screwed when the Southwestern Conference broke up, but then the Big 12 called on it too, and it jumped at the chance to rejoin its Texas friends. So that left:

Big East - 5ACC - 14Big Ten - 12SEC - 14Big 12 - 10Pac-12 - 12

However, 14 is an unnatural number for conference size: the natural numbers are 12 (to play a football championship game) or 16 (to create two 8-team divisions). The ACC proceeded toward 16 by adding Notre Dame in all sports but football, which moved it to 15 (though 14 temporarily for football) and set the state for it to invite another Big East team for the 16th spot. Rutgers was rumored to be that team -- but the Big Ten had already had conversations with Rutgers about adding it when it thought Notre Dame might join. Thus, the Big Ten needed to find another team to join along with Rutgers . . . and it was in luck, because ACC member Maryland, in its desire to maximize its revenue from football, had already contacted the Big Ten to see if they were interested in it. So the Big Ten promptly added both Rutgers and Maryland, which meant that the ACC needed to add another at least one new member for football. It quickly poached Louisville from the Big East, leaving Connecticut and Cincinnati as the last two powerhouse football members of the conference.

That left the landscape as follows:

Big East - 3ACC - 14/15Big Ten - 14SEC - 14Big 12 - 10Pac-12 - 12

The Big East is adding a slew of second-tier teams to get to 12, if they don't make better deals elsewhere first (see Boise State), which will decimate its TV revenue, so both Connecticut and Cincinnati want to bolt desperately. The logical place for Cincinnati to go is the Big 12. However, there is no comparably logical place for Connecticut to go (at least until Notre Dame becomes a football member of the ACC). Nevertheless, this has to be considered the lull before the final storm, as each of the 5 superconferences will look to move to 16 while the Big East tries to stave off irrelevancy or complete collapse.

The final major driver in the move to 16 schools will be the upcoming 4-team playoff for the college football championship. To protect their revenue sources, NCAA Division I-A football was the only division of the NCAA that did not have an NCAA championship, and the schools were determined not to give control of a championship to the NCAA, which would keep the lion's share of the revenues for itself. Instead, the major conferences and major bowls have agreed on a four-team playoff starting in 2014. It goes without saying that the playoff teams will probably be conference champions. A 16-team conference builds up the chance that the conference will have its champion invited to the playoffs.

So, in the end, this is all about TV money -- and it's always been all about TV money, ever since the Supreme Court stripped the NCAA of the right to be the exclusive bargaining agent for college football.

As has been clear since NCAA v. Univ. of Oklahoma, football rules at all of the Division I-A (now called Division I FBS) football schools. However, the NCAA basketball tournament involves all Division I schools, including those that play Division I-AA (now called Division I FCS) football.

With Division I-A football becoming so profitable thanks to TV, several Division I-AA programs have decided to upgrade their football programs to Division I-A (e.g., Massachusetts, South Alabama, Texas-San Antonio, Texas State, Georgia State, North Carolina-Charlotte, Old Dominion, with more potentially discussing it). Their conference affiliation may become scrambled as some of their members look to cash in and join existing Division I-A conferences for football. The current conferences, in addition to the "Big Six" listed earlier, are Mountain West, Mid-American (MAC), Western, Conference-USA, and Sun Belt.

However, existing Division I-AA programs and conferences will only be affected to the extent their members shuffle off to upgrade their football programs and join new Division I-A conferences. Those conferences include, in no particular order: Big Sky, Big South, CAA, Ivy, MEAC, Missouri Valley, Northeast, Ohio Valley, Patriot, Pioneer, Southern, Southland and Southweestern (a historic black conference, not to be confused with the former Texas conference), as well as the new 7-team Catholic university conference that is breaking away from the Big East.

One of the interesting things about NCAA basketball tournament revenue is that the NCAA pays it out over five years. Thus, teams that leave their conference are surrendering deferred basketball revenue. It shows how small this basketball payout is compared to football revenue that so many teams are willing to make a conference shift and give up this money.

The huge turnover in the Big East will apparently cost it its automatic bid for the NCAA basketball tournament (which will shift to the Catholic conference). That will be a problem if Cincinnati and UConn succeed in finding new conferences, but the,two of them will probably be invited, automatic bid or not, for the foreseeable future.

Wow. So the Big East will go from a 16-team, perennial 8+ bids and a history with over 10 national champions, including years like 1985 when they had 3 of the final four teams to essentially a non-existent conference. That's almost like having the Montreal Canadians became a QMJHL team. So much for history (even if it was only int he 30-year range).

Thanks AyaK. That was great and really helped me understand how the US system got to where it is.

Fortunately (I think) in Canada there is just one organization (CIS) which runs all of the university sports. The conferences (divisions) are all geographic, with the west, Ontario, Quebec, and the maritimes. The unfortunate part for the schools is that there is virtually no money on the table through TV rights, and for the fans very little in the way of TV games to watch (if anyone really cared anyway).

And working on campus, seeing students crossing streets completely oblivious to all else that goes on around them, yes, the iPhone (and other mobile technologies integral to my working life), watching the screen rules over watching the crosswalk.

Like Boise State, San Diego State is going back to the Mountain West. That leaves the Big East at a scrambled 10 teams for football next year, with two of those teams (Louisville and Rutgers) planning to leave after the season.

As of now, here's the Big East:Louisville (headed to ACC)Rutgers (headed to Big Ten)ConnecticutCincinnatiSouth FloridaTempleUCFMemphisSMUHouston

In 2014, after Louisville and Rutgers leave, Tulane and East Carolina will join, which means they'll still only be at 10, so Cincinnati will probably have pledged to leave for the Big 12, with UConn also looking to bolt.

It seems to be a foregone conclusion that the Big East will invite Tulsa for 2014 to fill the spot vacated by San Diego State.

Meanwhile, Cincinnati is expanding its stadium and holding off saying yes to the Big 12 because the rumor is that the Big Ten is looking at adding another ACC school, expecially if Maryland can get out of the ACC's punitive $50 million conference change fee.

All logos and trademarks presented are property of their respective owner. This website has been solely developed and presented by Reality TV World, and is in no way authorized or connected with any network, station affiliate, or broadcasting sponsor.